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Glasnost, History Mark
Successes for Containment

By

Robert L. Bartley

Updated June 10, 1997 2:24 a.m. ET

10/06/88

"The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies," George F. Kennan wrote some 40 years ago. "The United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must...